The IDAHOTB aims to organise international events to promote awareness of LGBTIQ+ rights violations. This date was chosen to celebrate the removal of homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1990.
People have asked me why we use the word homophobia to describe hate to LGBTIQ+ individuals if phobia means fear. Generally, Phobos (phobia) means fear but it is interpreted broadly in the case of homophobia meaning not only fear but also aversion or repulsion towards homosexuals.
Homophobia
Homophobia is a pervasive feeling of contempt, aversion, hate or/and antipathy and may be grounded in unfounded fear, and encompasses an internalisation of traditional values and social bias towards individuals who do not perform traditional gender roles. It is more likely to be expressed by people who grew up with more conservative lifestyle communities leading to stereotyping of minority groups such as LGBTIQ+. It may result from individuals’ needs to endorse traditional gender roles, seeing those who do not conform to traditional gender roles as somebody who fails to enact the role which was assigned to them according to their gender; and seeing diverse sexual orientation as a threat to the heterosexual role.
Homophobia appears to work as part of a sexual setting, delineating the safe from the dangerous. Its forces and fantasies are perceived as both crucial and protective to avoid potential disruption to the configuration of the traditional gender roles. Authoritarian and homophobic behaviours are typical of people who have a rigid perception of their gender roles and who are intolerant against all who are not like themselves. The social-expressive function of homophobic behaviour is based on the need to increase acceptance or support from peers boosting the sense of belonging to the group. Members of the group may maintain anti-LGBTIQ+ bias to gain approval of their leader. The defensive functions of homophobic behaviour are the result of interpersonal conflict such as the fear of same sex attraction and the enactment of same-gender desire.
Nowadays, if you are lucky enough to be born in a country where there are laws protecting the rights of people who differ from traditional gender roles, therefore having more support and acceptance of the LGBTIQ+ youths from your communities, it is possible for LGBTIQ+ youths to grow to adulthood free of much of the sense of shame and stigma, and showing boosted self-esteem and confidence, as contrasted with earlier generations.
The everyday hostility
Some environments and people are hostile to individuals who do not perform traditional gender roles. They express their hostility by a brief and daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental humiliation, whether deliberate or accidental, that communicates a hostile, derogatory environment, or scorn and insults toward LGBTIQ+ people. Individuals who possess minority status such as the LGBTIQ+ identities suffer daily stressors above and beyond the day-to-day stressors that the general population suffers. The pervasive nature of oppression within our societies causes an increase in total stress for people with minority status. The degree of stress fluctuates from microaggressions up to and comprising the threat or the reality of physical violence or death.
The Psychological Effects of Homophobia
We become what we are by acquiring social and cultural knowledge and internalising negative and positive experiences through our life history. In this way, we form our personal identity through social interaction. However, personal identity must be separated from social identity or how the individual acknowledges the others in their life history. If we have a disrupted life history, we may have felt the self being incongruent with the perception of who we are. This intensifies the perception of a broken identity because the difference between who we are and what is socially acceptable leads to feelings of shame and broken self, and a part of a shameful group. Any efforts to hide or anonymise reinforces our shame.
The acknowledgement of belonging to a shamed category of people is acquired through comparison with the socially demarcated ‘normal’ state. This leads to a consciousness of the shameful difference, efforts to distinguish and disavow and the creation of a subterfuge, an attempt to pass, or to uphold a cover as ‘normal’ as a means of self-protection.
The impact of stigma, prejudice and stereotyping have a significant psychological cost. Stigmatised views imply the issue of abomination and such reactions as disguise, disavowal and disclosure. It is presumed that one must pay a huge psychological cost, with an extraordinary level of anxiety, in living a life that can fall to pieces at any moment.
Gender Sexuality & Relationship Diverse (GSRD)
GSRD psychotherapists and counsellors work with those whose gender, sexuality or relationship styles are diverse or divergent from cisgender, heterosexual, monogamous, etc. As a GSRD psychotherapist, I work building rapport to assist, confirm and respect clients’ lived experiences. I believe that psychotherapists need to have the knowledge, skills and awareness of the social injustices that affect those who are GSRD to be able to understand them. I have experience in working with GSRD clients and can support you on your personal journey. I understand the challenges of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or non-heterosexual or non-cisgendered, and I offer a safe and non-judgemental environment in which you can explore these issues. Therapy will help you to challenge the problems you may be facing and help you to live a more authentic life.
Keywords:
International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia & Biphobia (IDAHOTB), LGBTIQ+, Homosexuality, human rights violations, Internalised Homophobia, Psychotherapy and Gender Sexuality & Relationship Diverse (GSRD). #IDAHOT2019 #IDAHOTB #IDAHOT #LGBTIQ+ #psychotherapy #counselling #internalisedhomophobia
References:
Cohler, B. and Galatzer-Levy, R. M. (2000) The Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives: Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moss, D. (2001) Civilization and Its Discontents: An Ongoing Update. Part 2: Homophobia in Men. Psychoanalytic Review: 393–400.
Moss, D. (2002) Internalized Homophobia in Men: Wanting in the First Person Singular, Hating in the First-Person Plural. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 71(1): 21–50.
Rubinstein, G. (2003) Does Psychoanalysis Really Mean Oppression? American Journal of Psychotherapy 57(2): 206–218.
Sue, D. W. (2001) Multidimensional Facets of Cultural Competence. The Counseling Psychologist 29(6): 790–821.
Weinberg, G. H. (1972) Society and the Healthy Homosexual. New York: St. Martin’s Press.